Apologies if this has already been posted. I did a search (google and forum), but my query is so generic, that while I found lots of results on sorting and filtering, I couldn't find anything that addressed the specific feature I'm looking to implement.

I'm working on upgrading my website from 1.3.9h to 1.5.1, so everything I'm working with for 1.5.1 is in a test environment (so I'm more than willing to break things). What I'm looking to do is to give my customers the ability to sort products within a category product listing as well as give them the ability to filter products by manufacturer. The category product listings already have the manufacturer filter available, and that works perfectly, but I'd like to let them sort like they can do on the featured product listing. The featured product listing lets them sort by date, model, price, and product name.

I've tried a few add-ons, but they're either too robust for what I'm looking for, or they don't include the date sorting, which is the most important option. (We're a bookseller; customers have been asking for a means to easily check out what the latest releases for a particular author (a.k.a. manufacturers) are, hence the filter to a manufacturer and sort by date added.)

Any suggestions are welcome, and thank you!